Coastal Inundation

Coastal inundation along the US Northeast coast is defined as flooding of dry land caused generally by hurricanes (tropical cyclones) and extratropical cyclones. Storms can generate strong winds and high surges, and the combined wind waves and storm surges during high tide can produce significant inundation and severe damage in the coastal zone. The FVCOM was upgraded to be a fully coupled current-wave model system in 2009 (Qi et al. 2009). This system established a forecast model network for storm-induced coastal inundation in Massachusetts Bay, Scituate Harbor, MA, the Hampton River, NH, and Saco Bay, ME. The FVCOM team led a multi-model comparison testbed project for extratropic cyclone-induced coastal flooding in Scituate Harbor, MA (Beardsley et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2013). Built on success in model validation, we projected the impact of the climate change-induced sea-level rise on storm-induced coastal inundation (Chen et al., 2021).

The animation provides a view of the storm-induced coastal inundation in Scituate Harbor on the Earth Google.

The animation displays the flooding process over the northern coast of the South China Sea during the Typhoon Lupit crossing in August 2021.